surveillance

The Beneficiary of Hosting the Olympics is the Police State

by Jules Boykoff

The extreme circumstances surrounding the international spectacle of the games justifies "states of exception" that remain part of law enforcement practices after the games end, stifling civil liberties and democratic dissent. 

China's Rising Surveillance Capacity Ill Omen for Other Modern States, Too

by Kathleen Keller

The inherent desire of states to protect their power and interests means that the aggressive implementation of electronic surveillance measures in China is likely to be repeated, with dire consequences for social solidarity. 

Beverly Gage: When J. Edgar Hoover Tried to Destroy the Left, Liberals Helped Him

by Michael Brenes

Liberals enamored of Hoover's performance professionalism and efficiency, plus his fervent anticommunism, allowed many powerful liberals to remain on board with the repression his FBI unleashed against the political left. 

Beverly Gage on J. Edgar Hoover—Enemy of Democracy

Beverly Gage's book explains the FBI director's longevity not to dark arts of blackmail and secret-keeping, but to a more straightforward and disturbing explanation: many Americans shared Hoover's reactionary views and liked how he cracked down on dissenters. 

Is the Feeling of Safety from Home Security Cameras Worth the Invasion of Privacy?

Historian Matt Guariglia of the Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that the cozy relationship between tech companies and police departments threatens to make camera footage less private according to the wishes of law enforcement. 

Are Americans Ready for their Neighbors to Turn Them In?

From abortion to classroom teaching, state laws are increasingly incentivizing people to report other members of the community for violating new restrictions. Experts say this has worked in the past to erode trust and enable further authoritarianism. 

The Internet is Lousy Because of Capitalism, Not Bad Apple CEOs

by Matthew Crain

"Surveillance advertising was created by marketers, technology start-ups, investors, and politicians, a coalition bound by the desire to commercialize the web as quickly as possible."

The Coming Pregnancy Surveillance State Will Bring "Homeland Security" to Women's Bodies

by Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz

The Dobbs ruling puts longstanding racist and nationalist beliefs that white women's reproductive labor is the price of their citizenship, and punitive controls on women of color, on collision course with the modern capacity of digital surveillance, threatening the criminalization of any miscarried pregnancy. 

Are You Ready to Be Surveilled Like a Sex Worker?

by Olivia Snow

A moral panic over sex trafficking has justified the development of an extensive electronic infrastructure of surveillance and punishment of sex workers. These are the tools other women can expect to have used against them if they seek (or seek to learn about) abortions or associate online with others who do.

How the Public Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Wiretapping

by Andrew Lanham

Brian Hochman shows that the white backlash to civil rights and racial justice protests helped to undermine longstanding civil libertarian opposition to electronic surveillance and normalize the idea of the government spying on Americans. 

The Islamophobia of Domestic Security and the Capitol Insurrection

by Juan Cole

Perhaps if the FBI hadn't been spending the last 20 years spying on American Muslims the organizing of white Christian nationalists leading to to the January 6 assault on the Capitol would't have been an apparent surprise to the authorities. 

Facial Surveillance Has Always Been Flawed

by Amanda Levendowski

Today, artificial intelligence startups are scraping the web to build massive face-recognition databases, without any pretense of consent by the public. The technology may be new, but the intrusive assertion of surveillance has a long history. 

Prison Tech Comes Home: Tenants and Residents in the Surveillance State

by Erin McElroy, Meredith Whittaker and Nicole E. Weber

Landlords have combined technologies developed for screening tenants in the 1970s with more recent digital surveillance and facial recognition systems developed in prisons to dramatically increase control over their tenants during an affordable housing crisis. 

What the FBI Had on Grandpa

by Molly Jong-Fast

"I never considered my grandfather to be a danger to the republic, but J. Edgar Hoover disagreed." The FBI surveilled writer Howard Fast extensively, though, as he wrote in his autobiography, "the eleven hundred pages detailed every—or almost every—decent act I had performed in my life."

The Dark Side of Campus Efforts to Stop COVID-19

by Grace Watkins

While colleges have a legitimate interest in suppressing virus transmission on campus, it is dangerous to expand the surveillance powers of campus police. 

Tilting At Windmills: The FBI Chased Imagined Eco-Activist Enemies, Documents Reveal

At the wind energy industry’s behest, the FBI and DHS gamed out attacks on facilities that they acknowledged face no threat.

Why Filming Police Violence Has Done Nothing to Stop It

The evidence suggests body cameras and other technological solutions to police violence are inadequate because the police are protected against consequences even if their misdeeds are recorded. 

The Making of the Military-Intellectual Complex

by Daniel Bessner

Why is U.S. foreign policy dominated by an unelected, often reckless cohort of “the best and the brightest”?

Communications Companies Have Been Spying on You Since the 19th Century

The revelation that a shady political consulting firm called Cambridge Analytica accessed data from 50 million Facebook users without their consent has rekindled debates about privacy and surveillance.

While You Weren’t Looking, the FBI Acquired the Power to Spy on You

by Suzy Evans

Once again security concerns are overriding civil liberties.